Update 101: Spiritual Highs and Physical Lows

This week has been a bit unusual. We had the wonderful visit from Elder Bednar at the beginning and then the last half has been filled with me being sick and two new elders moving in to our house to split our area for these next 4 weeks. 

I was feeling good enough to go teach Bora on Saturday and he is still progressing wonderfully! He is so spiritually receptive and willing to follow all of Christ's teachings and make the necessary changes in his life to do so. Teaching those with true desire to learn of Christ is truly the greatest joy in missionary work, as you see the light of Christ grow brighter and brighter in their lives. 

Elder Bednar met with all the missionaries on Tuesday morning. We had a discussion setting in which he asked us some questions and then let us ask him some questions.

Tuesday evening, he met with all of the members in Phnom Penh and he talked about:

1) Keeping the Sabbath Day holy

2) Paying Tithing

3) Preparing for a Temple

The first two points build on each other to come to the third point. It is through Sabbath day observance and paying tithing that we can come to fully enjoy the blessings of the temple. Elder Bednar said: "The church can build a temple in Cambodia. Building a temple is easy, preparing a people is the trial. Building a temple is easy, preparing a people is the trial."

Are we fully preparing ourselves to utalize the great blessings that are available to us through regular temple attendance? 

Love,

- Elder Taylor

Letters will be joyously received at: 

Elder Taylor

Cambodia Phnom Penh Mission 

House 2B, st. 222 off Norodom

P.O. Box 165

Phnom Penh Cambodia 

For those who scrolled to the bottom, pictures:

1169 At the driving range for Elder Killburn's birthday

1183 cont.

1191 On a shopping adventure at the Costco of Thailand in Cambodia - Makros

1194 The mission assembling for a picture with Elder Bednar

1196 Elder Bednar and Elder Evans shaking hands with missionaries

1199 Me with my two sons, Elder Phork and Richards

1214 Lunch with some members after English Class at the church

6709 After Elder Bednar spoke to the members Tuesday night

6718 Me about two minutes before I threw up at church on Sunday. (and it was stake conference) Thankfully I'd stepped out of the chapel.

Update 100: The Big One

100 weeks a missionary, and what an experience it has been. 

Here some pictures to illustrate our week:

1080: Skyping home with the family for the last time last week

1082: Service at the orphanage in my old area - Tuk Thlaa. So fun to see all the kids again!

1087: Two return missionaries in Cambodia and our new investigator. We ran into her at the service project because she was there with a member friend and has gone to church with that friend before, but has never learned with the missionaries and she agreed to meet with us to start learning more about what we believe. She is a great investigator! But, sadly she lives in the other elders area, so we only got to teach her twice.

1093: The crew

1095: Sweaty basketball people

1101: Teaching conjugations and I had to through y'all in at the end for a cultural moment ;) 

1105: This picture has a cool story. So we were going to go help paint a members house, but the service project got canceled. We were already all ready to go though and had a member who was going to take us there in his tuk tuk. So we went and visited a long time less active (5 years) with him who he used to know really well. The wife is a member but the husband never got baptized. We found there house after some searching and had a great visit with the husband. The wife was at work and the daughter at school. Great potential in this family! 

1138: Two more children of God were baptized into his fold this past Sunday. One, Srey Pean, was someone I contacted at English class. It's such a miracle to see how people can change their lives through the atonement of Christ.

1139: My favorite investigator right here, Bora. He is on track to be baptized June 17th. Keep him in your prayers as he seeks to understand about God and His teachings! 

1147: Richards and me with Bora.

6703: Talking with Bishop while he makes food for us at his house

Other news:

I got a call this week from the assistants saying that I'm getting two more elders in my area, so we're figuring out how to split it and move them into our house. Never a dull moment! They'll only be here for a transfer though to help try and boost the area for the new branch and since we have an excess of missionaries for a transfer until my group goes home. 

Sorry it's not all inclusive, but hope that it was informative and interesting. 

Love y'all! 

- Elder Taylor

Letters will be joyously received at: 

Elder Taylor

Cambodia Phnom Penh Mission 

House 2B, st. 222 off Norodom

P.O. Box 165

Phnom Penh Cambodia

Also, bonus picture of a cat staring us down.

Update 99: 1 Away From 100!

Happy Mothers day to all of those wonderful moms out there! And especially to my wonderful mother that always knows how to spread a smile :)

Met Reut (awesome member, and his wife) and ate chicken. We had two roasted chickens, a plate of rice, sprite, and a bowl of dip sauce and just went to town tearing the chicken apart with our hands and eating it like ancient Khmer style. 

Met Saravoun, preacher guy. Gave him a Book of Mormon and he said that he wants to study and find the truth. Keep him in your prayers that he will receive an answer from the Holy Ghost!

Lots of rain. Lots. And the rainy season is only beginning.

land mine blew up close to one of our investigators house. She told us all about it. Guess the landmines aren't all quite gone.

Ran into a fellow white guy american, John, and talked about politics for quite a while, very nice fellow though.

Long the wood worker is one of our new dope investigators. He works far away in a province, but his daughter lives in the city going to school and he comes and goes and wants to be sure to meet us. He loves scriptures and is excited to study and mark and write notes in his brand new Book of Mormon!

contacting and families. We spent all Friday morning walking around talking to people and after praying about it, we went to the area north of our house. We met several famalies and individuals who gave us their numbers and said we could come back later. Haven't been able to meet them all yet, but we'll keep trying! 

service and cement with kompheak. He is one of our investigators and couldn't meet because he was busy doing cement work around his house to prevent flooding for the upcoming rainy season, so we went and helped him out. Carried sand, mixed cement, talked to his neighbors, met his kids and wife. Good time. 

dinner with members on Saturday night and our best investigator, Nida, came and we taught her about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Then we had some kebabs and bok lhong (shredded papaya salad stuff)

The border was set by the stake president and the split to form a new branch will happen after all the paper work is worked out.

Sopheak is another investigator that is interested in learning English and Jesus Christ. Trying to help him with both aspects and just committed him to read in the Book of Mormon. Hopefully he keeps his commitments!  

Saw Schiefer, Denkers, Allred, and Brown. All people that used to serve in Cambodia with me and it was awesome to see them again! Elder Schiefer was my first companion and also finished him mission in this area and has a great love for the people here.

Left our house one morning and there was a group of Khmers. One blew kisses and called us frenchies in Khmer. Unexpected, but I found it highly amusing.

. 

Stopped at a light by the airport and 4 americans in a tuk tuk drove by, "Hi, Elders! We're Mormon!" And then they were gone, too bad we couldn't stop and chat a bit. 

Never a dull day.

The work rolls on.

- Elder Taylor

Letters will be joyously received at: 

Elder Taylor

Cambodia Phnom Penh Mission 

House 2B, st. 222 off Norodom

P.O. Box 165

Phnom Penh Cambodia 

Update 98: Rivers of Chocolate

These rivers have carried away some hopes and brought new ones as well.

So basically it rained a lot and flooded the streets with interesting things and our best investigator left for the provinces for 2 months, which means I'll be in America by the time she gets back. But, she's not gone for good, and will keep learning when she gets back. Also picked up a couple new investigators this week and have some potentials to follow up on. 

The other pair of elders in our ward had a baptism and our two progressing investigators came to church!

Last p-day we played laser tag with the office elders and got our measurements taken to have some shirts and pants made for us. $7 for a shirt or pair of pants. 

The work rolls on! 

- Elder Taylor

Letters will be joyously received at: 

Elder Taylor

Cambodia Phnom Penh Mission 

House 2B, st. 222 off Norodom

P.O. Box 165

Phnom Penh Cambodia 

Update 97: Can You Say, Elder Bednar?

Because he's coming to Cambodia! We had zone conference this week with Elder Meurs of the asia area general presidency and it was announced that Elder Bednar, of the quorum of the 12 apostles that leads the church, will come next month, May, on the 21-23. We will have a mission conference, which hasn't happened in 3 years since Elder Holland visited, meaning that all the missionaries in the country will come together to hear him speak. I'm so excited! I will get to listen to a modern day apostle of God speak to me and my fellow missionaries on how we can more fully do the work of the Lord in Cambodia. I also think it's nifty how I quoted Elder Bednar in my farewell talk just before I left to serve my mission, then he visited the MTC while I was in there, and now he will be coming to my mission my last transfer! He's kind of the bookends to my mission experience. So stay tuned for more to come on that. 

In other news in the work, we found, or rather the Lord led, 3 new investigators to us this week. 

1 part member family, 1 English class student (who is also a pastor in another Christian church), and 1 street contact. All have a great desire to understand and find the truth. Very excited to continue to teach them! 

For the part member family, the parents are members, but have been less-active for awhile and just started coming back to church. Their daughter is 10 and has never received baptism, so we will be working with them to teach and prepare her for baptism. Taught her the first time this week and she is a sharp girl.

The English class student found out about our English class from a flyer we handed out to him while he was on his moto. He has strong faith in Christ and sincere questions about the restoration and modern day prophets. I'm excited to continue to help him understand about the need of modern day prophets and how God has not stopped talking to us, but still leads and guides us today. 

The street contact we actually contacted the first or second week in our area, but I can't remember talking to him, just had his name and number in my planner. I invited him to church last week and he didn't come, but this week he showed up! I was sitting in the back of the chapel waiting for people to come and he walked in, didn't recognize him but invited him to sit next to me. He then told me about how someone had called and invited him to church awhile ago, but that when he called them back to ask for help finding the church he didn't pick up. I thought it must have been the other elders, but checked my phone and it was me, whoops! (My phone was already on silent) Met with him after church and found out that he actually has many European Christian friends, and that the week we talked to him one of his friends had just told him that he needed to go to a Christian church that week, and then we invited him to come learn of Christ! The experience really struck him and he took it as a sign from God. I'm so happy that God led me to be in the right place at the right time so that I could help this man begin his journey coming unto Christ. 

This past week we also did a successful split with some members (I go with one member and Elder Richards went with another) because we had more appointments than we could make Saturday night; first time I've ever had to do that on my mission. It was a bit stressful because one member help fell through and we had to find another last minute, but it all worked out. I just ended up having to bike about 4 hours. My area is a bit large, haha.    

I also met with President Eng (stake president, ecclesiastical leader of the northern half of Phnom Penh city) on Sunday about the splitting of the Pochentong ward and he has given me another assignment to update the Google map I made this past week, such that he can use it in the deciding of the split. I'll be working closely with Elder Tuft and Bishop Mon over the next couple weeks to get that all set up; President Eng gave us a month deadline, but I think it will only take 2 weeks at most.  

The work is going strong thanks to several miracle investigators of being in the right place at the right time. I'm excited to see how the Lord guides my path this coming week as well.  

The work rolls on.  Daniel 2:45    Doctrine & Covenants 65:2  https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/65.2?lang=eng#1

- Elder Taylor

Letters will be joyously received at: 

Elder Taylor

Cambodia Phnom Penh Mission 

House 2B, st. 222 off Norodom

P.O. Box 165

Phnom Penh Cambodia 

938 - Elder Richards loves burgers, and lucky for him there is a burger joint right by our house

941 - Biking

944 - Elder Richards found a pagoda 

955 - Elder Meurs came for a mission tour and taught us at zone conference 

958 - Khmer food. 

959 - Our area is a bit dusty. They're working on paving the highway and they soak the dusty gravel in water to try and reduce dust, but it sure does increase mud. 

964 - Food at church after ward conference

965 - cont.

966 - cont.

970 - Super fancy buy psych (rice and meat) from this morning. Cost me $1

6668 - Us with Rothea from a few weeks ago. Awesome member help, he helped us this past Saturday with our splits to teach two lessons at once.